EGU23-9912, updated on 26 Feb 2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-9912
EGU General Assembly 2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

The Magnetometer on the Psyche mission

Jose M. G. Merayo1, Benjamin P. Weiss2, Jodie Ream2, Rona Oran2, Peter Brauer1, Corey J. Cochrane3, Kyle D. Cloutier3, Lindy Elkins-Tanton4, John Leif Jørgensen1, Clara Maurel2, Ryan S. Park3, Carol A. Polanskey3, Maria De Soria-Santacruz Pich3, Carol A. Raymond3, Christopher Russell5, Daniel Wenkert3, Mark A. Wieczorek6, Maria T. Zuber2, and Kyle Webster5
Jose M. G. Merayo et al.
  • 1DTU Space, Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Lyngby, Denmark (jmgm@space.dtu.dk)
  • 2Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA
  • 3Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA
  • 4School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
  • 5Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA
  • 6Université Côte d'Azur, Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Laboratoire Lagrange, Nice, France

The asteroid (16) Psyche is the target of the NASA Psyche mission, where the magnetometer is one of the three science instruments on board. Its purpose is to prove whether the asteroid formed from the core of a differentiated planetesimal. The magnetometer will measure the magnetic field at different distances from the asteroid in order to detect any remanent magnetization, where a magnetic moment larger than 2×10^14 Am2 could imply that the body once generated a core dynamo, and therefore formed as an igneous differentiation.

The Psyche spacecraft carries two three-axis fluxgate magnetometers mounted on a fixed boom at 2.15m and 1.45m, respectively, which provide redundancy and gradiometer capabilities to compensate for spacecraft-generated magnetic fields. The magnetometers will be powered on early in the initial checkout phase and remain on throughout cruise and orbital operations and producing 50 vectors per second. The in-flight temperature of the magnetometers is expected to span a large range, therefore an extensive calibration program has been carried out in order to characterize the instruments and prove the performance pre-flight.

How to cite: Merayo, J. M. G., Weiss, B. P., Ream, J., Oran, R., Brauer, P., Cochrane, C. J., Cloutier, K. D., Elkins-Tanton, L., Jørgensen, J. L., Maurel, C., Park, R. S., Polanskey, C. A., Pich, M. D. S.-S., Raymond, C. A., Russell, C., Wenkert, D., Wieczorek, M. A., Zuber, M. T., and Webster, K.: The Magnetometer on the Psyche mission, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-9912, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-9912, 2023.